POWER OF THE PEN Continues its 28th Year of Competition for Young Writers

Power of the Pen, an interscholastic competition for young writers, is an award-winning educational enhancement program devoted to excellence in creative writing throughout Ohio.

Now in its 28th year, Power of the Pen provides students and schools with the means to achieve their highest academic goals. POP was created in 1986 by its present Executive Director, Lorraine B. Merrill.

Lorraine's first interscholastic tournament was held at Nordonia Junior High School and attracted just a handful of schools. The initiative helped earn her recognition as a Christa McAuliffe Fellow by the U.S. and State Departments of Education (1988). As a consequence, she was granted a year's sabbatical to bring to life her vision of blending innovative teacher training with interscholastic writing competitions as a means of strengthening academic achievement among students at the middle school level. This was accomplished (1988-1989) with substantial funding support from the Gund, Knight, and Cleveland Foundations.

Incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization at that time, the program has since grown to become one of Ohio's largest educational enhancement programs. More than 120,000 middle school students will benefit from Power of the Pen instructional methodologies this year, including more than 8,000 who will compete in formal Power of the Pen interscholastic writing tournaments.

POP is committed to being the leading interscholastic program in written expression. Originally designed for writers at the 7th and 8th grade levels, POP:

- Delivers interscholastic tournament competitions for young writers throughout Ohio.

-Assists teachers in the ongoing task of facilitating better student writing by providing quality tools and resources to identify, challenge, and reward excellence.

The program's aim is to exact a positive impact upon academic achievement overall. POP does so by providing in-class instructional aids that will serve more than 120,000 students in Ohio this year. More than 7,500 of these students will compete directly in a Power of the Pen tournament.

District Tournaments are the initial level of competition, and are held at locations around the State. All schools which enroll writers in the program first compete at the District level.